The Issues

Competition policy uses economic analysis to enhance our understanding of how firm behavior affects social welfare. Scholars featured on this site consider how technology markets function, and the special issues raised by networks, platforms, interoperability, and bundling by firms like Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

Researchers today are trying to understand how information technology affects innovation, productivity, and economic growth while studying the impact of political and legal ground rules. Academics featured here are looking at the potential to create jobs and keep policymakers aware of emerging trends in technology.

Intellectual property (IP) rights help creators limit who uses their work without giving value in return. This protection encourages innovation in thought and expression. Academics featured on this site research topics such as open source licensing, digital rights management, patent reform, IP and technical standards, trademarks, and trade secrets.

Sub-Issues

Interoperability refers to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together. Although the term is often used in a technical sense, cultural, political and business factors can lead to data not being shared. Interoperability can be achieved through initial product design, collaboration in product development, standards, and licensing design.

Sub-Issues

This section contains research on the networks that make the Internet work, the evolution of different business models that operate on the Internet, and ways to store and access information on the Internet through Cloud Computing.

Information technology lets people learn about one another on a scale previously unimaginable. Information in the wrong hands can be harmful. Scholars on this site consider problems of privacy, fraud, identity, and security posed by the digital age.

TAP Highlights

“While I’m confident the courts will find ample grounds to strike down today’s order, Chairman Pai’s rushed and technically flawed plan causes immediate damage, not just to the U.S. economy, but to the FCC’s reputation and to Americans’ already flagging faith in our nation’s democratic processes." – Barbara van Schewick

Cornell Tech’s two-day Speed Conference examined the societal and ethical challenges inherent in the radical processing speeds of artificial intelligence. One theme addressed was regulation: what should be done when the speed of regulation itself is fundamentally slower than that of technological development?

“The great promise of predictive analytics in health care is the ability to find optimal ways of delivering care. But in the case of run-of-the-mill mental health concerns, there may be multiple ways to define the problem.” – Frank Pasquale, University of Maryland law professor